Pocketbook Announces Color e-Reader with Front-Light

Pocketbook announced today that it is going to be releasing a new e-reader in July 2013 with Color e-Ink and Front-Light technology. The Color is being produced by a second generation e-Ink Triton, which is the same sort of tech that the Ectaco Jetbook Color employed.

The new PocketBook reader will especially appeal to those who like reading magazines in PDF, as well as to those who deal with tables and graphs. It will be much easier to turn over magazine spreads, analyze charts, and deal with any technical literature. The traditional PocketBook’s omnivorous nature for any book format allows you to open virtually any document.

The device itself will be around 8 inches and features a capacitive touchscreen. The resolution is 600×800 pixels and will display over 4096 colors. Battery life will run you over a full month of use. It will use the same type of Front-Light technology found in the Amazon Kindle Paperwhite, Kobo Glo, and Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight. This allows you to basically read in the dark and this unit will be the first large screen reader with night light technology. Not much is known in terms of processor, RAM, and other semantics. In the coming months we will see a clearer picture of what this device brings to the table.

I am very excited about the second generation of e-Ink Triton. Overall, e-reader technology has been fairly stagnant in the last calendar year. We have seen a slew of devices utilizing e-Ink Pearl, such as the Kindle Paperwhite, Sony PRS-T2, Kobo Glo, and many others. The first generation of the tech was fairly under-performing, but this was directly attributed to low-end hardware specs found in the Jetbook Color. It will be interesting to see what the Pocketbook Color can do in the real world. I don’t expect it to have ANY availability in North America, due to the company pulling out of the market. Likely, it will be relegated to eastern Europe, Germany, and other countries around there.

Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader. He has been writing about audiobooks and e-readers for the past ten years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times.

That sounds really promising, let’s see what will be when.
If the price is in a reasonable range and the hard-/software has no major bugs- it is bought.
Been waiting for something like this quite a while now.
Jetbook color hasnt been an option because their support isnt as great and there are some flaws with the device.
With a capactive touchscreen, I hope there will be a reflow option, it is a musthave really, 8 to perhaps 9″ sounds just about right.
I still believe there is a market for these color readers, that have a midsize up to 11″.
The question is only whether or not the producers can get bookworms and students to buy a single purpose device like an ereader- for that the producers must be able to give a good price compared to tablets.
That was one of the huge flaws ectaco had- you cant demand 400€ incl. student sale for such a limited device in terms of intuitivity, when there is only one reason to buy it- the eink screen.
It just doesnt cut it- unless it is close to perfect otherwise in terms of usability.
And a text reading device in these times, especially if the market is education, needs things like capactive touch and reflow.

inmypjs

I like this to be successful but at 8″ it seems that this will cost more than a Kindle Fire HD, Nexus 7 or Nook HD. It will find it hard to compete for a device use just solely for reading. That uneven bezel is also funky, yuk.